1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for making bakery goods that exhibit a high degree of edible particulate visibility. The method of this invention maximizes the visibility of edible particulates on the top surface of the bakery goods and provides a means for mass producing a product having a desirable home-made appearance. The invention also relates to bakery goods and the dough from which they are made.
2. Related Background Art
Baked goods, such as biscuits, cookies, brownies and the like, were all hand made until the early 19th century. Since that time, in Europe and the United States, many new varieties were born and the trade developed rapidly. In the United States, a major outgrowth of the early biscuit trade is a relatively mature cookie and cracker industry. Modern cookies take innumerable forms, from relatively soft, moist, short-shelf-life cookies to relatively hard, dry cookies which remain edible for relatively long periods of time. Other forms include cookies having a frosting or filling, and cookies with inclusions such as chocolate chips or nuts.
There are substantial differences between the home-made baked cookie and the machine-made baked cookie. In general, the texture of the home-made cookie is less homogeneous than that texture of the machine made cookie. When inclusions such as discrete edible particles are present, the inclusions are more uniformly distributed in a machine-made cookie than in a home-made cookie. When the edible particles are distributed on the surface of the cookie, their distribution is more uneven in the home-made cookie. Such homogeneity of the machine-made cookie is generally the result of (i) the large batches of material that are generally used that require more thorough mixing, (ii) the large machinery that mix more thoroughly, and (iii) the high speeds that the mechanized processes are run at for efficiency.
Most types of home-made baked food products are generally characterized by a random, non-uniform topography. The topography results from the hand-shaping of the dough into a desired shape prior to baking. The home-prepared food product may also contain discrete pieces of edible particles as inclusions or the edible particles may be placed on the surface of the food product. Examples of such particles include chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, nutmeats, bits of fruit such as raisins, and sugar coated candies such as MandM""s(copyright) brand chocolate candies or Reeses Pieces(copyright).
The inclusion particles can be distributed throughout the baked good. However, the inclusion particles have a higher degree of visibility when the particles are on the surface of the baked food product. Thus, inclusion particles are often distributed on the top surface of home-baked goods prior to baking.
In contrast, as discussed above, baked food products made commercially generally have a uniform topography due to the automated processes employed. As a result of considerations of speed and mass throughput, most high-speed manufacturing methods of making baked food products such as chocolate chip cookies, containing inclusion particles, are typically prepared by mixing the inclusion particles into the cookie dough. A continuous process is used to form a dough rope having the particles randomly distributed within the cookie dough. The cookie dough is then cut into individual pieces, i.e., dough preforms, using a cutting wire. The dough preforms are baked to form the cookie containing the particles.
A significant disadvantage, however, is that the majority of the discrete particles are contained within the cookie and are not visible on the outer surface of the cookie. Surveys have found that consumers generally prefer a food product that prominently shows edible particles compared to a food product having included particles that are less visible. Moreover, this lack of xe2x80x9cshowxe2x80x9d in baked food products is economically disadvantageous since the edible particles are generally a more expensive component than the dough. Accordingly, processes to increase the visibility of particle inclusions at the surface of the food products are highly desirable.
An example of a method to improve the show of inclusion particles is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,904. This patent describes a method to increase the visibility of edible material in baked foods by penetrating a continuously moving dough rope, containing distributed food particles, with pins or various disk means that engage and transversely move a portion of the randomly distributed particles through a preselected peripheral area of the continuously moving dough rope that corresponds to a preselected surface of the baked products. This method does not, however, result in one hundred percent show. Moreover, dough containing hard or large edible particulates are difficult to wire cut.
Current baked food product methods that employ a wire cutting process to form dough preforms disadvantageously allow for the inclusion of only very small food particles in the dough. Larger food particles will frequently cause breakage of the cutting wire or the particles may be forced out of the dough by the wire as it passes through the dough across the extruder nozzle. This results in a waste of food particles and in some cases complete disruption of the production process in order to fix the broken wire. Furthermore, the larger particles may prevent the wire from cutting all the way through the dough resulting in random tearing of portions of the dough pieces. Also, as the wire encounters relatively large particles, the wire may cause excessive lateral movement of a given dough piece or non-uniform lateral movement of a given dough piece to dough piece. Random displacement of the severed dough pieces results in a non-uniform arrangement of the dough pieces on the conveyor belt or band upon which the dough pieces land. The non-uniform arrangement of the dough pieces can lead to dough piece transfer problems with respect to other belts or non-uniform baking of the pieces.
One manner of avoiding the use of a wire cutter is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,741,916. This patent describes a method and apparatus for producing individual dough pieces of substantially constant size and shape by passing a continuous dough rope between a pair of horizontally reciprocating cutting elements. The use of such cutting device does not provide a means of improving show of edible particles and its success on dough containing large particulates is dubious.
The use of a wire cutter is also avoided in U.S. Pat. No. 5,104,667 which discloses making a cookie preform from a continuous rope of dough through the use of mechanical fingers. The resulting cookies are said to have a highly variegated topography. While it is asserted that the visibility of inclusions may be improved, this method does not provide one hundred percent visibility. In addition, the fingers may damage certain inclusions.
One potential solution to increase the visibility of edible particles in a baked food product would be to sprinkle additional pieces of edible particles on the dough preform""s outer surface prior to baking the preform. An attempt of this is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,084, which describes a machine for making cookies in which dough is extruded from a cylinder and deposited onto a conveyor belt. The machine sprinkles particulate material onto the conveyor belt for application to the underside of the cookie and sprinkles onto the cookies themselves. However, depending on the tackiness of the preform""s outer surface, it is quite likely that much of the particle material would fall offxe2x80x94either prior to or during the baking step. Accordingly, such methods are not generally commercially feasible without a dough formulation developed specifically for the required tackiness while still maintaining good baking and other processing properties. Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,084 forms the shape of the cookie with cutting knifes after the dough has been deposited. This mass cutting makes it difficult to obtain a home-made appearance.
There are certain inherent limitations in the known dough formulae and in the methods by which they are prepared. Known doughs are limited, for example, in the xe2x80x9cspreadxe2x80x9d that is achievable when the raw dough is baked. The maximum achievable spread in known typical cookie doughs is believed to be about 150%. That is, in the example of a round cookie, the maximum achievable ratio of the diameter of a baked cookie to the diameter of the raw dough preform is 1.5 to one.
Such limitations of known doughs impose undesirable constraints on products that can be manufactured from the doughs. For example, the amount of dough required to produce a cookie of a desired diameter is greater than would be the case with a dough exhibiting a greater xe2x80x9cspreadxe2x80x9d. The greater amount of dough required by the limitations of known doughs presents a heretofore insurmountable obstacle in further reducing the cost of producing a cookie of any given diameter. In another aspect, the achievable spread ratio of known doughs dictates that for a given dough diameter, a cookie will have a thickness which cannot be further reduced without an additional process step to flatten the preform.
A method to overcome the above described problems and provide a bakery good having a home made appearance with edible particles having maximal visibility would be highly desirable.
The present invention is related to a high-speed manufacturing method for producing various types of bakery food products or goods that exhibit a high degree of edible particle visibility, i.e., the edible particles are readily visible by casually inspecting the product""s outer surface. The high-speed manufacturing method also provides a bakery food product with a desirable home-baked appearance. For example, the edible particles appear to have been hand-placed on the dough prior to baking. As used herein bakery food product or goods includes baked goods and preforms which may be subsequently baked, for example, at home by the consumer. The preforms may be partially baked or unbaked and may be fresh or frozen.
In particular, one embodiment of this invention is directed to a method of preparing a bakery good having a plurality of edible particles on a top surface of said bakery good, said method comprising the steps of
(i) forming a dough plug from raw baking dough;
(ii) depositing said dough plug on a conveying surface having edible particles disposed thereon so that said plurality of edible particles are incorporated on a surface of said dough plug;
(iii) inverting said dough plug so that the incorporated edible particles are on a top surface of said dough plug; and
(iv) optionally baking said dough plug to form a baked good having the plurality of edible particles on the top surface.
Another embodiment of this invention is directed to the bakery good prepared by the above described method. Preferably, the bakery good of this invention is a baked good and more preferably a cookie.
Yet another embodiment of this invention is directed to a cookie dough comprising an admixture of:
(a) fat in an amount of about 15 to about 20 percent by weight of the dough, wherein said fat is selected from the group consisting of shortening, margarine, butter and mixtures thereof;
(b) sugar in an amount of about 25 to about 35 percent by weight of the dough, wherein said sugar is selected from the group consisting of sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose, maltose and mixtures thereof;
(c) flour in an amount of about 30 to about 40 percent by weight of the dough;
(d) egg or egg substitute in an amount of about 0 to about 10 percent by weight of the dough;
(e) ammonium bicarbonate of about 0.1 to about 1.5 percent by weight of the dough; and
(f) salt in an amount of about 0.25 to about 0.6 percent by weight of the dough.
Of particular significance is that baked goods prepared using the above described dough have an improved xe2x80x9cspreadxe2x80x9d, i.e., the final dimension in a transverse direction of the baked good, e.g., the diameter of a cookie, is at least 1.75 times as large as an initial dimension in the transverse direction of the raw dough plug. The spread associated with the dough of this invention assists in providing a commercially mass produced baked good having edible particles on the surface thereof that appear to have been hand placed.